Back to normal last week - overnight rain on Tuesday plus some probable earlier frost had made the track surface very sludgey and horrible, such that we could not get any machinery on it until early afternoon. There was a large delivery of fresh shale awaiting us so once the track had dried out a bit sopme of this was deposited on the track, meshed thoroughly and packed down well in case of further rain.
After brushing and draining puddles and the usual power-washing of the fence this gave us an opportunity to get on with some odd jobs around the place, including painting fence boards and maintenance of our venerable tractors, involving replacing the securing pin in the gear lever linkage of one (quite a fiddly job) and attempting to cure excessive oil burning in another.
We then "fixed" our leaning lamp-post by attaching a ratchet strop from it to a stanchion on the dog track rail and winding it to a more upright stance, digging out its base and filling the hole with postcrete. We shall wait and see if this does the trick and we are able to use our large curtain to reduce the amount of shale landing on the greyhound track covers.
Friday started dry but as the track was still quite moist we took the opportunity for another project by making up a smaller chain harrow by adding two spare sections together, drilling out linkage holes and attaching them to a section of angle iron which just happened to be lying around, and in the absence of any suitable chain using fence cable and shackles to temporarily attach it to the rear of a grader. The new harrow was tested and worked very well during the meeting.
The meeting, the first leg of the Scottish Cup against an understrength Glasgow Tigers was mostly uneventful and resulted in a win which should be enough for the return leg at Ashfield.
Congratulations to Leigh Adams and Darcy Ward for their Aussie double in the EL and under-21 finals
